On March 19, just hours before U.S. forces began their raids on Baghdad, more than 50 U.S. government intelligence experts as well as scholars and embassy staff from several South Asian countries assembled in a top-floor room at John Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies for a briefing on political Islam in India. The briefing was presented by political scientist Dr. Rollie Lal, a former assistant language teacher in the JET program.
Comfortable in Hindi, Chinese, Japanese and elementary Persian, Lal works in the Washington office of the Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Rand. She is one of two South Asia specialists at Rand Corp., the largest nonprofit think tank in the United States, which focuses on global defense and security-related issues. Lal's field of research includes national interest and identity issues in a region that extends from North Africa to China and Japan. She is also active in counterterrorism research at Rand.
With the advent of the Iraq war, global intelligence experts were concerned about whether U.S. military action in the Arab world would provoke hostilities from India's 140 million Muslims, the second-largest Islamic population after Indonesia. According to Dr. Lal's findings, however, India's Muslim communities present little immediate threat to the stability of South Asia, due to their politically moderate tendencies.